Sept. 14--Leaders in the Chicago-area Puerto Rican community are pushing back against President Donald Trump's tweets disputing reports that the death toll from Hurricane Maria last year was about 3,000.

U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., went on his own Twitter rant Thursday morning in response to Trump's tweets. He tweeted that more people died in Hurricane Maria than in Hurricane Katrina and after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. "That is not fake news, Mr. President."

"I pray Trump's response to current East Coast disaster will be better, more empathetic," Gutierrez wrote in another tweet, referring to Hurricane Florence as it neared landfall. "He has golf club in NC & winery in VA, so maybe Americans in those states will get more of the President's help than my fellow Puerto Ricans did. And I pray it is more successful."

The comments came a week before the first anniversary of the Category 4 Maria hitting Puerto Rico, leaving many without power and wrecking the island's infrastructure. In Chicago, more than 1,700 people or about 920 families from Puerto Rico came to the city to seek help, city officials previously said. Chicago is home to a community of more than 100,000 people of Puerto Rican descent.

In August, the governor of Puerto Rico raised the official death toll from Hurricane Maria from 64 to 2,975. The increase in the estimated number of dead came after a study was published by George Washington University that found that the deaths of 2,975 people during a six-month period were linked to the hurricane and its aftermath. Researchers found that Puerto Rican officials didn't know about death certification practices after a natural disaster, according to the study.

Thursday, Trump denied the death toll was that high and accused Democrats of trying to make him look bad.

".....This was done by the Democrats in order to make me look as bad as possible when I was successfully raising Billions of Dollars to help rebuild Puerto Rico," Trump tweeted Thursday morning. "If a person died for any reason, like old age, just add them onto the list. Bad politics. I love Puerto Rico!"

Cristina Pacione-Zayas, co-chair of the Puerto Rican Agenda, said she thinks Trump's comments were a form of distraction from the fact that work is still needed to help restore the island. The Chicago-based group has been working on hurricane relief efforts for the past year.

"His comments, to me, are ludicrous when you have known institutions that are respected for their research and their being able to (be) substantiated through rigorous scientific methods," Pacione-Zayas said.

Ald. Roberto Maldonado, whose 26th Ward includes the Humboldt Park neighborhood, said Trump's comments in addition to the government's response to Hurricane Maria demonstrates how the U.S. treats Puerto Ricans like "second-class citizens." Maldonado grew up in Puerto Rico and later moved to Chicago to complete a doctoral program.

He said he was not surprised by Trump's comments, describing the president as "impulsive, outrageous, racist."

"He's so ignorant and out-of-touch," Maldonado said.

Jose Lopez, executive director of Chicago'sPuerto Rican Cultural Center, said Trump's tweets point at the president's overall view of Puerto Ricans. He doesn't think Trump appreciates the contributions they have made to the U.S.

"More importantly is the way he views all Latinos, and it is a way of looking at us being somehow less-than," Lopez said. "I think that has been his discourse from the very beginning."

Lopez said people should use Trump's tweets to reflect on the colonial relationship between the island and the U.S., because he thinks Hurricane Maria exacerbated problems that had long existed. Lopez visited Puerto Rico last month as part of the Puerto Rican Agenda's relief efforts, and he found there was still work to be done.

Earlier this month, a report by the Government Accountability Office was critical of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. Among the report's findings were that officials did not understand the severity of the damage because the power grid was destroyed, there weren't enough Spanish-speaking employees and some staffers weren't fit enough to handle the conditions of the environment, The Associated Press reported.

There have been other studies that have questioned the earlier death toll from the hurricane. In July, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine estimated that the number of dead from Hurricane Maria could be as high as 4,645. The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health was involved in the study.

Various news outlets have reported in recent months that there was a backlog of autopsies at the San Juan morgue. The backlog delayed one Vernon Hills family from getting closure after a relative died in June while visiting Puerto Rico, the Tribune previously reported.

An estimated 1,833 people died directly or indirectly from Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia and Alabama, according to a report from the National Hurricane Center. More than 2,980 people died in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to a report from the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.